


what do the cards say?

by ncfan



Category: Herbert West - Reanimator - H. P. Lovecraft, LOVECRAFT H. P. - Works
Genre: (Not strong enough to warrant a ship tag), (nothing that's what), But what can you do?, Gen, Pre-Slash, This is totally self-indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21739975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: It would probably go better if introspection didn't currently fill Stephen with a special sort of terror.
Kudos: 3





	what do the cards say?

**Author's Note:**

> [ **CN/TW** : by implication, the period-typical racism that made it difficult for people of color to find well-paying work that didn’t involve the danger of a mill or being someone else’s servant]

The sky over Arkham was as frosted glass, but cracked and split with dark stripes of cloud, an opaque, swirling gray. Stephen’s second winter in this place, and he still caught himself staring at that sky in a mix of disbelief and something bordering on fascination. He had never seen a sky quite like this anywhere else, a sky like one of the snow globes his aunt had brought back from Germany after the glass was struck and developed a spider web of fine cracks. He half-expected to see water come pouring from those dark lines, not as rain but as a torrent.

A sharp gust of wind blustered from the east, and Stephen adjusted his scarf with a grimace. Though the sky might have been something unique, the other facets of early winter in Arkham were entirely too familiar. The cold kept trying to set hooks in him.

“Have you ever been to Miss Eldred’s before?”

Herbert’s black-clad silhouette was set in sharp relief from the largely-pallid sky. He walked on briskly ahead, shoulders straight but back very stiff, as if he thought the cold would not touch him if he refused to bow to it. But as they walked down the street that led towards the footbridge over the Miskatonic, Stephen thought he could discern a tremor in those straight shoulders, in that stiff back. He couldn’t remember just when it was that he started noticing these things.

“Can’t say that I have.” They turned a corner around a building of dingy brick, and the sour smell of the water hit Stephen all at once; for all that the cold muted it, it was still like being immersed. “On that side of the river, I’m usually heading for the Green Cross, or that soup shop near the Methodist church.”

Paying a visit to that soup shop didn’t sound like such a bad idea, if Stephen was being honest with himself. Their beef stew was excellent, and, more to the point (he thought, as he rubbed his hands, nearly numb in spite of his gloves), very warm. No chance of that, though, no chance of their going anywhere but where Herbert intended, not when he moved forward with such purpose.

“I’m not surprised. She’s excellent with procurement—I can’t recall how many times she’s obtained materials that I couldn’t get my hands on by any means—but her home…” Herbert waved his gloved hand, too abruptly to be called idly. “It’s not a place I can really imagine you visiting.”

Stephen laughed lightly. “Now I _am_ curious.”

Another howling gust of wind saw Herbert clutch at his scarf as it threatened to fly away. “You must bore more easily than I thought. It’s not far, though—her house is close to the river—so you can be underwhelmed all the more quickly and be done with it.”

The wind stripped the nuance from Herbert’s voice, rendering it flat and toneless. No matter how he tried, Stephen couldn’t make a guess as to whether or not Herbert was joking. He made no response.

After a few minutes more of trudging down the streets and alleys of Arkham, avoiding as best they could the patches of snow and darkly gleaming ice, the footbridge came into view. Looking at it, Stephen bit back a sigh, his stomach twinging uncomfortably as the clouds thinned just enough for the winter sun to make the weathered stone light up with a glittering crust of ice. It had rained last night, and snowed the night before that. He… really should have expected this. At least the footbridge was situated over a fairly narrow portion of the river.

Cobblestone gave way to packed earth too frozen to be rendered mud by the recent rain—though this necessitated walking slowly and picking their way across the patches of snow and dead, brown grass, for the frozen earth gleamed in places with frozen puddles. Crusted with ice that gleamed with the weak sun, the footbridge looked ancient, the rough gray stone fit to crumble under the slightest pressure of a pedestrian’s foot. Stephen was hearing rumors of a car going over the side of one of the larger bridges into the river. Granted, Arkham was glutted with rumors, but looking at this narrow bridge, Stephen could believe it.

At least the walls were high enough that they’d have a hard time falling into the water.

“Have you had any luck finding somewhere we can work?” Stephen asked, as they mounted the steep steps onto the bridge. The steps were even slicker under his feet than he had anticipated; one slide out from under him and he grabbed onto the railing, cursing.

Herbert looked back, frowning. “Are you alright?”

“Fine.” Herbert’s gaze grew almost intensely scrutinizing; Stephen felt his face grow warm. “I just slipped.”

Herbert nodded briskly. “Well, be careful.” With that, he turned back and started up the stairs again. “And no, I haven’t.” A hot, irritated sigh escaped his mouth. “Halsey remains as obstinate as ever, and word has gotten round to the other departments; we’re not going to get space _anywhere_ on campus.” He stepped aside at the top of the stairs to let Stephen get up onto the bridge. The look Herbert turned on him was almost bewildered in its frustration. “I don’t understand why he won’t at least give us a hearing.”

Well-trodden words, those, though the tones in which they were spoken were considerably more variable. "It’ll be better when we can come to the dean with proof.” And something that had clearly been dead when first presented to the man, as opposed to something he could—and surely _would_ —claim had been alive and merely unconscious. Dean Halsey had certainly proven himself the sort of man who required that sort of proof. “Present it as a fait accompli, and he’ll have no choice but to at least listen.”

His words did not have the reassuring effect intended. Instead, the expression that came over Herbert’s face was the softening of someone who seemed, to Stephen’s eyes, just a little lost. “That he won’t listen _now_ is—“ He shook his head and straightened up. In a clearer voice, he said, “We won’t be able to use my room anymore, either.”

“What?” Stephen stared incredulously at Herbert’s back as he started across the bridge. “You told me the house was empty.”

“It _was_.” And the river, however loud its voice, wasn’t loud enough to drown out the frustration in Herbert’s. “The neighbors heard. Mrs. Caldwell doesn’t suspect anything—nobody could tell just where the noise was coming from—but I’d just as soon not press my luck.” Herbert shook his head again, more choppily. “I’ve no desire to find somewhere else to live, not at this stage.”

“Where are we going to be doing our work, then?” Stephen stepped on a particularly slick patch of ice, and only saved himself from falling by planting all of his weight on the foot in question. Slow going would be safer—not that Herbert seemed to have come to the same conclusion. “Sneaking into the college laboratories hasn’t gone well for us.”

It was easier at first, before they really had the attention of Dean Halsey and the other members of the medical school’s faculty. Herbert was on speaking terms with most of the janitorial staff that cleaned the medical laboratories at night, and had either through gentle persuasion or bribery convinced them to look the other way if the two of them lingered in the laboratories longer than they ought. But after a while, it became clear that Halsey, or maybe someone else—Doctor Bancroft seemed a likely candidate; he certainly leveled enough suspicious looks Herbert’s way during their classes—was either aware, or at least suspected, that Herbert and Stephen were making use of the laboratories after hours. Certain janitors were dismissed, and those who remained took a lot more persuasion to let the two of them in past sunset. The last time, they were nearly caught out when Doctor Lacey returned for paperwork he’d left behind; they’d hid themselves and fled the moment Lacey left (They hadn’t gotten far enough that night for there to be anything laying out that could have identified them; thank God for small mercies). After that, they’d not used the laboratories again. It just wasn’t worth the risk.

“I don’t know. “Herbert wobbled a little as he stepped on a slick spot; Stephen bit his lip, but Herbert himself seemed not to notice. “Arkham’s hardly at a loss for abandoned buildings, but all of the buildings I’ve looked at are either too badly damaged, or too close to occupied buildings.” His shoulders dropped as he stepped onto another patch of ice. “Well, there are a couple of others, but—“ Herbert laughed darkly “—conducting experiments in _those_ buildings would be tantamount to tossing a line into the water with my hand speared on the hook. It’s just asking for trouble.”

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what you mean by that?”

Because it could mean so many different things. This was Arkham, and it could mean so many things.

“No, I don’t think I will. Some things aren’t believable unless you experience them yourself, and some just aren’t—oh, goddammit.”

At last, Herbert’s refusal to avoid the patches of ice on the bridge had caught up with him. He listed dangerously towards the wall as he tried and failed to right himself, hand slipping from the slick wall as his feet were trying to slide completely out from under him.

From his own position on steadier ground, Stephen laughed and caught Herbert by his elbows, slowly guiding him away from the ice patch. “What was that you were saying about how I need to be more careful?” Herbert’s face screwed up with what could have been embarrassment or indignation, and Stephen laughed again, a smile unfurling over his mouth. He reached up to tap the left-hand stem of Herbert’s spectacles; the cold of the chilled gold frame seeped through Stephen’s glove to bite his finger. “You wouldn’t want to break _these_ things; you’d be out of commission for days just waiting for a replacement.”

Herbert blinked up at him, silent for a long moment. The wind caught on his hair and scarf, tousling the former and setting the latter to flutter excitedly. “I…” He paused, something nameless gleaming in his eyes. “I suppose not.”

The world seemed to slow as they stared at each other, the rush of the river beneath them alternating between a deafening roar and near-silence. In the classroom, Herbert often seemed a bit washed-out, like a photograph left just a little too long in a sunny window. His colorings were very fair, and his taste in clothing didn’t help matters; his wardrobe seemed to consist mostly of varying shades of gray, with the occasional fawn or very dull blue thrown into the mix. Always pale, always muted, someone you might overlook if you didn’t know to look for him—though Stephen scarcely understood how Herbert _could_ be overlooked.

Out in the winter cold, Herbert was still pale. But against the backdrop of gray water, gray bridge, gray sky, and barren trees, no one could have called him muted or washed-out. Bright white was his skin, but for pink lips and the patches of red on his cheeks where the bitter wind had chafed the blood close to the surface; the crisp black of his coat made for an intense contrast. The gold frames of his spectacles flashed in the weak sunlight, and his pale hair had taken on a similar golden shine. The eyes that scoured Stephen’s face were a touch tentative, and a bright, brilliant blue.

The effect was… striking. It wasn’t the first time Stephen had caught himself staring at Herbert in such a fashion, but it was the first time Herbert had ever met his eyes for more than a split-second before averting his gaze and mumbling a request for some object that would require Stephen to tear his eyes away. Now, Herbert was silent and still, the only movement around him the silver puffs of breath that escaped his mouth. As Stephen watched, Herbert’s cold-flushed cheeks grew a little redder.

Maybe he was just… No, he wasn’t imagining it.

And Stephen was still touching him.

Stephen cleared his throat loudly, and took his hands away from Herbert’s elbow and the left stem of his spectacles (So close to his face, he realized, stomach swooping in a manner not entirely unpleasant). “We should keep going, shouldn’t we?” God, the way his voice cracked, he sounded like a fifteen-year-old again.

Herbert stared at him a moment more, lips parted slightly and face frozen, before nodding slowly. “…Yes, we should. Miss Eldred won’t be happy if I try talking to her past sunset.”

“Lead the way, then.”

For the rest of their walk across the bridge, Stephen watched Herbert carefully, and told himself he meant only to keep him from slipping again. But Herbert walked forward steadily, shoulders straight and back stiff.

It was to Stephen’s surprise that Herbert’s path carried them towards one of the more run-down blocks of buildings on the far side of the river. He would have thought that… but no. He shouldn’t be surprised by this sort of thing, not anymore. They picked up their materials how they could get them, wherever they could find them.

“It’s not far,” Herbert said. He was scanning the oft-dark and sometimes broken windows of the buildings on either side of the narrow, poorly-cobblestoned street with wide, cautious eyes. “The second house from the end of the block, on the left hand side.”

Stephen duly looked on ahead, and almost immediately stopped short.

The narrow building Herbert had pointed out to him was, at first glance, much the same as the others, with little to distinguish it beyond the fact that the windows were both lit and intact. The brick was old and weathered, the small stoop and its rusting cast-iron railing glittering with ice. Clumps of dead leaves littered the ground around the house, and an empty milk bottle sat out by the front door, whose pale blue paint was beginning to peel away. But what really got Stephen’s attention was the sign sticking out from the side of the building.

Though the paint was garish shades of purple and gold, it was beginning to fade and flake, exposing in places the brittle gray-brown of the wood beneath. Despite those patches where the paint had flaked off, it was still easy enough to read the words emblazoned in stylized gold letters:

‘Sophrona’s Fortune-Telling’

“Your contact is a _fortune teller_?!”

So much for not letting himself be surprised.

“What?” And to Stephen’s even greater surprise, Herbert looked at him like he’d grown a second head, before comprehension dawned. “Oh, no; that’s her sister. Eugenie Eldred is my supplier.” He shrugged diffidently. “To be honest, I’ve been around Miss Sophrona so often that I don’t really think much about her profession anymore.”

Stephen rolled his eyes. “That must be nice.”

He remembered a couple of fortune tellers setting up shop during the World’s Fair. His brother, Andrew, had wanted to visit them, and had persuaded their mother to let the two of them go together. One of the fortune tellers had been hungover and reeked of booze. The other had fumbled the crystal ball while trying to tell Andrew that he was going to die in a train accident, and made it more likely that Andrew would die from a glass shard to the throat as the crystal ball shattered into a thousand pieces on the floor. The incidents had certainly made an impression, one that had stuck as the years wore on.

While Stephen still cast a dubious look at the sign, Herbert strode confidently to the door, knocking twice and staring expectantly at the tarnished brass knob.

For the next few moments, there was a silence that dragged on just long enough for Stephen to begin to wonder if the house was even occupied. It was entirely possible that the building had been vacated since Herbert’s last visit; that was a common-enough fate for Arkham homesteads. The question of what had happened to the occupants was rarely one answered to his satisfaction, but then, few questions were ever answered to his satisfaction, where Arkham was concerned.

Then, a light flickered in the window on the left-hand side of the door, turning the tatty lace curtains from a dingy off-white to an orange the shade of soap scum. A thin hand pushed the curtains slightly ajar; not enough for Stephen to make out the person’s face, but apparently enough for that person to make out who was standing on the doorstep.

Clinks of metal on metal, muffled by maybe an inch and a half of wood, rang out as the owner of that hand undid the locks. The door swung open to reveal an older woman backlit by faint orange light, all her color washed out in the light behind her and the gloom before. She wore a dark, shabby woolen dress that could have been black or navy blue, her hair an indeterminate dark color, her skin shaded heavily by the gloom that shrouded her stoop. Her mouth pinched in an unmistakably disapproving frown.

“You’re late,” she said.

Herbert didn’t smile, not quite, but the way his mouth relaxed as he nodded his head was close enough to the real thing for Stephen to feel a pang at the sight of it. “Forgive me, Miss Eldred. I misjudged how icy the roads were; it took longer to get here than I had anticipated.”

Lips pressed a little thinner, “Hmm.” Her eyes flickered to Stephen, hardened. “Who’s this?”

Herbert _did_ smile as he nodded at him, quicksilver-sudden. “This is Stephen Harper, my research partner. I thought I should introduce you, should he need to pick up materials in my stead.”

“You need to _ask_ me next time you want to bring folks around here. I don’t want strangers in my house with no notice.” But she was stepping aside from the door, waving them both inside. “I don’t want folks seeing me let strangers into my house,” Eugenie Eldred was grumbling, as Stephen passed her by.

Frankly, with a fortune teller for a sister, Stephen would have thought she was used to having strangers in her home. Apparently not.

As Stephen stepped past the threshold, he was hit with a nearly-overwhelming odor of lavender. He paused, eyes swimming, swallowing down on a cough. There was no obvious source for the smell, and yet it was omnipresent, with nowhere to turn to escape it.

The moment Stephen had recovered from the first shock of being hit by this smell, his eyes were on Herbert. Herbert had complained often enough of headaches after they would leave the smoke-choked public house, and this was on another level entirely from that. But Herbert walked on, seemingly unaffected, and Stephen saw nothing for it but to follow.

They were led into a cramped sitting room, where the fire burned low in the hearth, letting the chill seep in and the shadows reign over what domain the weak gas lamps could not illuminate. A low sofa with faded, fraying pink-and-gold brocade upholstery sat before a lower coffee table laden down with newspapers, magazines, a dirty teacup and saucer, and a thick glass bottle sitting on its side, a glimmer of dark liquid gleaming in the punt. Around that coffee table also were three thinly-cushioned chairs whose main appeal, in Stephen’s mind, was their proximity to the fire.

When Stephen got a closer look at the one closest to him, he saw that one of its legs had been reduced to a stub of splintered wood, with a stack of books doing their best to fill the gap.

On second thought, proximity to the fire was their only appeal.

Cabinets were pressed up against the back wall, all of them dark wood that gave no hint as to their contents, except for one with a dusty glass panel which showcased a collection of translucent green glassware that glowed faintly, almost iridescently. Uranium glass, maybe, or maybe not. Behind the cabinets, the creamy wallpaper stamped with a pattern of small, barely visible flowers was starting to peel away, revealing another level of wallpaper beneath it—darker, an almost jaundiced yellow.

Just as Stephen was wondering if it would be regarded rude if he sat down in one of those rickety-looking chairs, a woman emerged from one of the two doorways off to the far right hand side of the room.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said to Herbert, much more genially than Eugenie Eldred had, just a few minutes ago. This, Stephen could only suppose, was the fortune teller. Her dark eyes fell on Stephen less suspicious than curious. “Who’s this?”

“You can introduce yourselves, by yourselves,” her sister—probably—told her in tones of stone, before addressing Herbert: “Well?”

Again there came to Herbert’s lips something that was almost a smile, as he drew a glass bottle full of some amber liquid from his coat. “This isn’t quite what you usually take, but…”

There was no point in trying to speculate on what the bottle contained; the way Eugenie’s eyes lit up upon sight of it nixed any idea of speculation. “Sweet child.” She tucked the bottle into her own skirt pocket. “Come with me so we can chat away—“ she looked sourly at her sister and at Stephen in turn “—from prying ears.”

As they were leaving the room: “Miss Eldred, I told you, he—“

The door slammed shut behind them, and he next sound to come to Stephen’s ears was the muffled thumps of two sets of feet on a staircase.

That left Stephen alone with Sophrona Eldred (well, he assumed it was her; she certainly didn’t carry herself the way he’d expect from a housemaid, even if this had seemed like the sort of house that would employ a maid), who wasted no time in sitting down on the old sofa, which groaned under her weight. “Well, sit down, young man, and tell me who you are,” she said cheerfully.

At least he knew whether it would offend his hosts if he was to sit down.

Carefully skirting around the chair with the shortened leg, Stephen took a seat in the other chair closest to the sofa. If the sofa had groaned under the woman’s weight, Stephen was momentarily fearful that this chair might break under his—proportioned for an adult, but the materials felt like they would have been more appropriate for a child’s chair. It held, but Stephen thought it might be better not to put his full weight on it. Just in case.

“I’m West’s research partner, Stephen Harper,” he told her, summoning a ready smile to his lips. “West thought it would be a good idea for me to meet his supplier, but I don’t think he warned your sister ahead of time.”

Sophrona—it had to be her; she hadn’t so much as blinked at ‘sister’—laughed ruefully. “Oh, Eugenie’s bad about strangers. Took ages for your friend to get his foot in the door without her trying to slam it on him.”

Now, that was an interesting image to contemplate. Just how long had Herbert been doing this, anyways? Stephen knew the interest had to predate his entry into medical school; he’d gotten his reputation too quickly for it to simply be something he’d thought up after his first day of class. How long had it taken for Herbert to establish a relationship with the woman he’d followed upstairs?

That would probably be a question best put to Herbert himself. Better the known quantity.

“Is that bad for your work?” He _was_ in someone else’s house; Stephen hoped he could at least somewhat mask his skepticism. She was, after all, the sister of Herbert’s—and his, he supposed—supplier. He couldn’t be burning bridges left and right. “I bet you get a lot of strangers in here, asking after you.”

Sophrona rolled her eyes. “No, she don’t like it. But she knows how hard it is for two like us to find good work around here, and neither of us want to go begging to the mill.”

She sighed, getting up from her seat to throw another log on the fire. As she stoked the burning wood with an old, rusting poker, sparks popping, there came a loud thump from upstairs. Stephen glanced warily up towards the ceiling, but all was silent after that.

“My sister just goes up stairs when I get customers,” Sophrona went on, voice hooked with exasperation. As she stoked the fire, the smell of lavender hanging in the air grew ever stronger. “Locks her door and gives hell to anyone who gets curious enough to venture up without my say-so—she did catch some body with his hand in the till once, so it’s not all bad.”

Poker abandoned, she flopped back down on the couch, trying idly to brush away the speckles of ash that had accumulated on the front of her dress. Her mouth quirked in a frown as she attacked a particularly stubborn spot, but just as quickly, her eyes lit up and her mouth curved into a smile. “Long as you’re here, soaking up the heat from my fire, you can help me with something.”

Not quite guardedly, “And what is that?”

“Hang on; let me go get the deck.”

She disappeared behind the door standing next to the one she had first appeared from, only to emerge maybe thirty seconds later with a deck of cards in her hand. Well, two decks, maybe; it was difficult to ignore the way the cards comprising maybe two-thirds of the stack, from the bottom up, were considerably larger than the top third. She shifted a few magazines off of the coffee table before setting the cards down, all as one deck, and caught Stephen’s eye with a wry grin. “I’m new to this; haven’t tried it out on any of my customers. Been hard finding out how to do this right.” She chuckled darkly. “Librarian thought I was trying to call up some kind of demon.”

In any other town, Stephen would have assumed she was speaking in hyperbole. In any other town, he would have assumed the librarian was overreacting. “What… is this?”

Sophrona snorted. “Oh, that’s just the same face she made; good work. They’re just tarot cards, young man. Haven’t you heard of tarot cards?”

His mother used to tell him and Andrew that trying to determine if they’d have good luck that day by trying to find a four-leaf clover in the park would lead them both to hell. As it happened, Stephen had not had an overabundance of experience with forms of divination or fortune-telling. He still wondered how on earth Andrew had persuaded her to let them visit those fortune tellers all those years ago. Perhaps the atmosphere of the World’s Fair had clouded her judgment somewhat—or rather more than somewhat.

The look on his face seemed to give whatever answer his words could not. Sophrona shook her head, smile twisting on her mouth. “Come sit across from me. Let’s see what the cards say about you—if I can remember what they all mean,” she added, probably unnecessarily.

At a loss for anything else to do while he waited for Herbert, Stephen moved his chair to across the coffee table from where Sophrona sat. She shuffled the deck, fumbling the cards somewhat thanks to how much larger the bottom two-thirds had been than the rest. A thin white scar, livid against the darker skin around it, flashed and rippled on her hand with the increasingly rapid motions as she tried to get the stack well and truly randomized.

Most fortune-telling was trickery of some sort (or so Stephen had heard; again, his personal experiences were decidedly limited), and he could already guess at what trickery might be employed here. That a certain amount of cards were considerably smaller than the rest would make them much easier to identify. And now that he was sitting closer to the deck as it was shuffled Stephen could see that the backs of the cards were largely distinct from each other. They were many different colors, rusty red and bronze yellow and dull purple and duller blue and a strange, almost sickly green. Some were patterned with flowers (roses and daisies and violets), others with dots or fleur de lis or diamonds, and many were dog-eared in ways that would have made them immediately recognizable to someone familiar with the deck.

_Something to do, while I wait._

Finally, Sophrona seemed satisfied that she had sufficiently shuffled her deck. She took a moment to try to straighten it out, tapping the edge of the deck against the table with a sharp clack. Then, she drew the top three cards from the deck, and laid them down, face up, on the space cleaned off on the table.

It took a moment for Stephen, looking at them all upside down, to make sense of some of the images on the face of the cards. The first card Sophrona had laid out depicted a man holding a sword. The second card, smaller than the other two, showed a man and a woman standing before another man—a priest, maybe? The final card looked like a card from a normal deck of playing cards, but instead of hearts or diamonds or spade or clubs, there were emblazoned on the cards ten cups, deep red with gold rims.

“The Page of Swords.” Her hand fell over the card depicting a man holding a sword. “You are full of inspiration, and you’re finally starting down the path to putting your ideas into action, but…” Sophrona pursed her lips, paused. “No, wait. That’s the Page of Wands. Hang on a second.”

She hopped up from the sofa and hurried into the room she’d gotten her cards from. From behind the door, there came a racket of squealing hinges and the scrape of wood on wood. Somehow, Stephen didn’t think fortune telling with tarot cards was supposed to include an interlude like this. _Is this what all those dead hamsters felt like when we realized we’d forgotten the syringes?_

It had been silent upstairs for quite some time. Outside, the edges of the windows not shrouded by curtains were turning dark, and the tatty, stained old lace felt entirely insufficient to thwart prying eyes that might stare in.

Sophrona hurried back out of the room, holding a dog-eared pamphlet in her hand. The front cover dangled by about the bottom quarter, and Stephen got no closer a look at it than that, for she sat back down, setting the pamphlet on her lap and folding one leg over the other in a way clearly meant to obscure the little booklet from his sight as much as possible. Tall as he was, Stephen wouldn’t have needed to crane his neck all that much to see the text (though reading it upside down would have presented a greater challenge), but the signal had been sent, loud and clear. He kept his eyes trained upon her face.

“The Page of Swords,” she intoned, reading over a page in the pamphlet as she spoke. “Is… just about exactly like the Page of Wands.” Even she sounded skeptical now. “Ugh. Oh, well.” Her eyes snapped up, a bright smile suddenly fixed to her lips. “The Page of Swords signifies a thirst for knowledge and the search for ways to communicate that knowledge. You’re looking forward to learning new things, but you’re still trying to figure out if you can keep on with it.”

“I’m a _university student_.”

“Not all of this is obscure or esoteric,” Sophrona fired back, eyes narrowed. “Most stuff you talk about here is completely ordinary. You want smoke and mirrors, go run down Houdini. Now…” She let her hand rest over the second card. “Let’s go on, young man.

“The Lovers.” Her mouth twitched. “This one’s got a lot of meanings to it, but most who get it’ll want me telling them one thing, and one thing only. You married?”

No, those curtains would be completely useless to keep out prying eyes, wouldn’t they? “No,” Stephen said shortly, and prayed she’d let it rest.

“You got a girl?” So much for that slaughtered prayer.

The cloying air felt entirely too close. “No.”

She squinted, poring over his face, with an expression horribly like someone reading text. “You _sure_?”

“ _Yes_!” Stephen exclaimed, before staring nervously up at the ceiling.

“Oh, you _sound_ sure.” She drummed her fingers on the coffee table. “The Lovers is a card you can make say about whatever you want it to—or so I think. It’s about love, about the bonds between lovers, but it’s also about your choices. _You_ are trying to suss out what you want to live for, what beliefs to hold on to and what beliefs you want to toss away. You’re also—supposedly,” she remarked, eyebrow raised, “trying to make a decision about whether or not to pursue a relationship with someone. Supposedly.”

“Supposedly,” he echoed, with a thin, humorless smile.

“Hmph. Alright. Last, we’ve got the Ten of Cups.” She huffed out a laugh, rolling her eyes. “Well young man, you and your imaginary sweetheart are in for a—“

“For the last time, I don’t have—“

“Alright, don’t lose track of your head; as I was—“

“What is the _point_ of this?” Stephen burst out. His blood pulsed hard, close to the surface of his skin, effectively banishing whatever cold the fire, already burning low again, could not. “Do people really come here asking you to tell them things they could have figured out themselves if they’d just stop for five minutes and—“

“Oh, we are wise, aren’t we?” It was her tone that stopped him dead. She was frowning deeply at him, but that could not silence the way her cool, withering tone could. Sophrona sat with her back pressed hard against the sofa, left arm propped by the elbow on the scratched wooden armrest of the sofa, fingertips pressed deep into the yielding flesh of her cheek. She regarded him the way Stephen had seen Herbert regard the animals that had given no response to the reagent during the earliest of their shared experiments, and said, “So you know yourself, you’d say?”

That… was not a question, however it might be framed. She was shorter and smaller by far than him, graying hair and lined face betraying the frailty of age. If she sought intimidation, she would have to find another target. But curiosity was enough to keep him silent, too—curiosity, and recognition that this was a bridge that was smoldering, and ought not be set ablaze.

She rolled her eyes, an exaggerated gesture that made Stephen wonder just what sort of face she presented to her customers. (Fortune tellers were tricksters; they were performers, too.) “Every young man thinks he knows himself; you aren’t special. You think you know yourself, and you never look inside, and that blinds you to most of what lives inside. People who come to me, least they’re smart enough to know they need _help._

“That’s what I _do_ , young man. People don’t know how to make sense of all the things going on inside of them.” She pressed her lips tightly together. “One day, you’ll want that help, too. You just don’t know it, yet.”

“I… think I can sort out my own feelings without looking at a deck of cards. Or tea leaves.” Shards of glass glinted in the margins of memory. “Or crystal balls.”

She laughed suddenly. The timbre of her laugh was… Stephen stiffened slightly, peering at her more closely. No, she was still just a normal woman, with none of the power ascribed to the night and the shadows by the furtive, fearful people of this place. Just a normal woman.

Still laughing, a hand pressed against her mouth (most likely to hide her teeth), “I don’t use a crystal ball, young man. I don’t trust any method but that which lets me first learn what I need to know.” Laughter died from her voice, now sharp-edged once more, as she said, “And maybe you’ll know yourself one day. But with an attitude like the one you’ve got, I’d wager the knowledge’ll come too late to do you any good.”

Whatever Stephen might have said in response, he was spared from actually saying, thanks to the telltale drumbeat of footsteps on the stair. The moment the door into the sitting room started to push inwards, all sharpness vanished from Sophrona’s face like a mirage dissolving as night swallowed the sun. “She give you much trouble?” she asked, perfectly genially.

Herbert appeared in the doorway, but did not respond immediately. He regarded her smile, lips slightly pursed, and then his eyes flicked to Stephen’s face. He was… guarded was not quite the word for it. Stephen wasn’t sure what that look was, though he hoped that ignorance would not persist for much longer. Then, Herbert raised a quizzical eyebrow, and Stephen felt his face grow hot; _that_ look, at least he recognized.

“No, Miss Sophrona, she did not.” Herbert shook his head with a rueful sigh. “I think I know what I ought to bring her from now on. I’ll be back later this week.”

“Hmm, well, I’ll be seeing you. And tell your friend to look out for, well—“ Sophrona turned her gaze back to Stephen, mouth twisting in a sharp, crooked smile “—I think he knows.”

The chances of Herbert not pressing for more information were basically nil. If Stephen was not so enamored as he was of life, he might have wished for the earth to swallow him up.

Herbert blinked slowly. Oh, yes, being swallowed by the earth was looking surprisingly attractive, right about now. “Come along, Harper,” he said at last. “It’s getting late.”

Never had Stephen been as grateful for a blast of winter air as he was when they exited the house. Not only did he feel marginally less as if he might catch fire at any moment, it might actually be possible to attribute how red his face was to the frigid air, rather than to any other cause.

While Stephen had been taking a breath of air that, whatever else might be said of it, did not reek of lavender, Herbert had been making his way down onto the sidewalk, and waiting. Judging by the look on his face, very expectantly.

“What _were_ you two talking about while I was upstairs with Miss Eldred?”

He’d hoped for a little more time before they got into this, honestly. “Nothing important,” Stephen told him, and tried to sound as dismissive as possible. “She just brought her mumbo-jumbo out; that’s all.”

Herbert’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Oh? Miss Sophrona can say some interesting things when she talks about fortune telling. Did you hear anything interesting?”

For the first time, it occurred to Stephen to wonder just how thin the walls in that house were. “No, Herbert, I didn’t.”

Herbert’s mouth was starting to twitch; it was just a pity that the situation didn’t allow for Stephen to enjoy it. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Stephen told him firmly. “Now…” It would be easier to stand his ground from the sidewalk; made it look less like he was about to march back inside. “…How did things go for you?”

Twitching turned to a full, if somewhat odd, smile. “Later, then.” Later, _never_ , hopefully. “Let’s talk while we walk back.” Herbert gazed up upon the darkening sky, the smile fading from his face. “I didn’t realize how long we had been in there.”

Stephen thought the length of their trip here had more to do with the hour of their leaving, but night had been creeping up on them unawares a lot, lately.

“You heard me talking to Miss Sophrona,” Herbert said, as they headed back down the street. “Miss Eldred needs a little time to procure them, but I’ll be able to pick up supplies from her later this week.”

Which meant they could go back to trying to refine the reagent—once they had found somewhere safe to conduct experiments. No easy task, the latter, but Stephen felt himself smiling, nonetheless. “That’s good.”

“Yes. Keep in mind, there are some things I’m considering that I do not think she would be able to hunt down, but for now, we should be set.”

Thus far, Herbert had made no mention of wishing to introduce new ingredients to the reagent. Stephen frowned at his back as they neared the bridge. “What ‘things?’”

Herbert glanced back over his shoulder at him. “Oh, it’s just supposition at this point.” His voice was light, but the deep shadows cast by the buildings they walked past made it impossible to discern his impression. “I may not need them at all; it’s too early for you to trouble yourself over it.”

“You can tell me,” Stephen protested, a thorn of something like hurt (or maybe just wounded pride; they felt so similar, sometimes) pricking at his heart. “I might be able to help.”

At that, Herbert paused, blinking up at him with what even the shadows could not conceal as surprise. “I suppose you could,” he said at last. He rubbed at his arm spasmodically as a tooth of wind bit into them both. “But that can wait until we aren’t out in the open. Come along. The night does not belong to us.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can probably tell how unacquainted I am with tarot from this fic. Making Sophrona Eldred also unacquainted with it and literally reading off of a pamphlet was my way of compensating (Also, it was way more trouble than I thought it would be to track down information about what tarot decks were like before the advent of the Rider-Waite deck).


End file.
